Strings
by Gift of Reading
Summary: What would you do if your school was attacked by a fire puppeteer...fight or run? No matter, this is my story, my choice... and a few mishaps along the way. - Modern day settings with a touch of Rozen Maiden and Avatar. Rated T for language and fights.
1. Prologue

**Author**: Gift of Reading

**Chapter**: Prologue

**BETA**: none

**Story**: Strings

**Rating**: T – violence and swearing, possible blood in future chapters.

**Related to**: Possibly _Rozen Maiden_ due to the puppets and _Avatar: The Last Airbender_ cause of the elemental control (although only fire and water).

**Summary**:  
>What would you do if your school was attacked by a fire puppeteer...fight or run? No matter, this is my story, my choice... and a few mishaps along the way.<p>

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><p><em><strong>P R O L O G U E<strong>_

_(6 weeks ago)_

Crap, how did this happen? In front of me stood a fire puppeteer with his deadly puppet "Josher" standing next to him. Flames licking the ground where my class mates had just been occupying, lucky for them a teacher had managed to get them away in time.

Lucky for them, unlucky for me. The teacher didn't see me, who is currently hiding behind a car trying to stay alive. I kept wondering how shit like this happened to me. I hadn't even unlocked my element! Or my puppet!

You're probably wonder what in the world I'm talking about. Well I'm a puppeteer called Yuji. Actually I can't call myself a puppeteer yet; I have yet to even discover my element or my puppet. You all know what an element is right? Well in this world we can only harness two of them and control them; fire and water – personally I'm hoping I'm water.

Puppets are like the physical manifestation of our abilities. They have their 'Power' form where they can access their full power and fight difficult battles. And they have their 'Human' form; they can still use their power but not at full scale, also they look just like normal humans.

Ok, back to the present. This fight was defiantly going in the fire puppeteer's favour. He was against a 16 year old kid with nothing to protect himself or others with. Just for the sake of it he shot fire balls around the cars, just missing me but the heat caused me to yelp out in surprise.

Big mistake. Another fire ball came at me again but this time it knew where it was destined to hit. I scrambled out of the way in an attempt to stay alive. The flame hit the car, causing a massive explosion; blowing me away, forcing me to land on the hard concrete face down.

In the centre of the car park stood a single man. His arms bulging with massive muscles which were littered with ugly tattoos. His head was clear of any hair which allowed him to continue the tattoo over the top of his head, which looked like a giant flame curling around his body.

Beside him was Josher; a massive baboon with its hair on fire. The same tattoos curled over his body too, mainly focused around his tail which was tipped with a deadly looking blade.

'How did I end up fighting a puppeteer?' I asked myself inwardly, hoping to keep the puppeteer focused on the flaming car. Slowly I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, pain seared around my body signalling damage.

Finally I managed to get myself sitting up and looking at the puppeteer. I knew I could die here but what could I do...

I didn't have a puppet...

Or an element...

Then – as if in slow motion – the puppeteer turned around to me and shot flames at me. I couldn't move, so I closed my eyes and prayed to whoever would help. But the flames never came, in fact; everything felt wet.

I pealed my eyes open and saw a wall of water in front of me. On the other side the puppeteer was fuming, literally.

"You weren't supposed to know how the fuck to do that yet!" He roared in anger, all the while more flames was trying to force their way through my barrier. _My_ barrier? Well, at least I knew I stood a chance.

I slowly stood up, wobbling out of control. I forced the water to wrap itself around my legs, giving them a brace so that I could stand or maybe even run.

"I hope this works," I muttered to myself. Without a second thought I charged forward, keeping the barrier in front of me. I pulled my hand back and wrapped water around it like I did with my legs.

'Now!' I thought as I released my barrier and found myself face-to-face with the fire puppeteer. With all the force I could muster I swung my fist at him, he never had the chance to stop me; my fist made impact in the dead centre of his face – the force shot him into the air.

I watched his flailing body as it came back down to earth at an alarming speed. A sickening crunch shocked my body as his own crumpled in a heap of meat on the other side of the car park. Not far from me Josher gave out a blood chilling scream and turned to dust.

"That's right," I said to myself as I dragged my damaged body home. "A puppet disappears after his puppeteer is killed."

With on final glance back at the fire puppeteer I trudged my way home, already planning on where to run to.


	2. Time Flies

**Author**: Gift of Reading

**Chapter**: Chapter 1 – Time Flies

**BETA**: none

**Story**: Strings

**Rating**: T – violence and swearing, possible blood in future chapters.

**Related to**: Possibly _Rozen Maiden_ due to the puppets and _Avatar: The Last Airbender_ cause of the elemental control (although only fire and water).

**Disclaimer**: I do not own _Rozen Maiden_ or _Avatar: The Last Airbender_. If I did I would make it something similar to this but only the puppets could control elements or something...  
>I'll stop now...<p>

**Summary**:  
>What would you do if your school was attacked by a fire puppeteer...fight or run? No matter, this is my story, my choice... and a few mishaps along the way.<p>

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><p><em><strong>Time Flies<strong>_

_(six weeks later)_

"Is he alright?" asked someone in the distance.

"Can you give us some details please," pestered another.

"Why did he run?" questioned more, I tuned them out till they were a dull hum.

Damn reporters, they were like a bad flu; you just couldn't shake them. I couldn't bother opening my eyes otherwise they would start asking me some questions, better leave the answering to the professionals.

I cringed as the soft surface I was on bounced, forcing my feet to be higher than my head. Then my head was lifted and I was rolled into a dark room, which smelt strongly of disinfectant. Great; an ambulance, just what I needed.

I listened for the doors behind my head to finally close with a thud before opening my eyes, squinting to make out the blurry shapes in front of my face. A mask was forced over my mouth and nose, freaking me out slightly. I didn't need it ... maybe ... ok I probably did. I had no idea how I looked but it was probably terrible.

From what I could recall from my shattered memories I was supposed to have a cut just below my rib cage. Why? Cause I just had surgery performed on me by fake puppets. Yes puppets, and before you start judging them; they saved my life. I was dying and they performed surgery on me to keep me alive.

The reason I was dying was because of my heart, since my little incident with the fire puppeteer and his exploding car my heart has been acting up. So the puppets replaced my old one with a fake one, worked the same way as a real one but it was made of porcelain.

Yer, I should be dead, but I'm not. And now I'm being raced to hospital because they can't find a heartbeat on me; that's 'cause my new heart just keeps blood flowing around, without the need to pump like a normal heart.

I groaned in annoyance, causing several faces to turn to me. Who they were I had no idea, my mind was still fuzzy from whatever drug was used on me to put me out. Suddenly the people around me started to scrambled around; checking for a pulse (twice), breathing, anything to say that I was alive.

'Damn them,' I thought quietly as they stuck needles into my arm.

"Fuck!" I screamed and jumped up, but was held back down by the restraints on the bed. "Get off me!"

Instead of listening to me they decided to hold me down as another pressed another needle to my skin. I may have killed before but I was still scared stiff by needles. In an attempt to get away I forced the liquid inside of the needle to expand and shatter the needle.

Now that the needle was gone I stopped struggling, my soft brown eyes quivering the person who had been holding the needle. Sensing that I had calmed down the others let go of me and backed up, murmuring to each other. One stayed back and unlocked my restraints around my body, allowing me to sit up and look the others in the eye.

Everything was quiet apart from the drumming of the car outside and the continuous alarm of the heart meter signalling no heartbeat. Damn, I got myself into some interesting situations.

"How...how are you alive?" asked someone, shock glazed their voice. I brought one hand to my head and said in a bored tone, "Dunno."

After a minute of silence I decided to tell them, "Fine, I had heart surgery. If I hadn't I would defiantly be dead."

"Then where's your heart beat?" pressed the man standing at my head, pointing at the heart metre. A tick was forming on my head, couldn't they tell? They basically did the same surgery on others too, but usually limbs not hearts.

"I thought you guys were supposed to be smart," I told them in annoyance.

"We're smarter than you brat!"

"Yer right sparky," instantly I regretted saying that. The man pulled out his suitcase (seriously, who leaves that in an ambulance) and shoved Diplomas and awards in my face while ranting about how smart he was.

"What I'm trying to say is that what happened to me you guys have done to others, I wasn't implying that you were stupid. You just lack some common knowledge of your practises."

This remark earned me an angry doctor shoving his face into mine (spraying spit on me at the same time). By the time the others had dragged him away and I had wiped the spit off my face we nearly at the hospital.

"What I'm trying to say is that you guys don't realise when someone has doll surgery done to them," I told him (still wiping spit off me), to emphasis my point I tapped my chest. Looks of shock registered on each of their faces.

Before they could answer the ambulance came to a stop and like robots they all got ready to unload me.

"By the way, don't tell anyone else; I don't the extra popularity." I told them as I was unloaded. Above me stood the sterile white building of our hospital, which was blocked out almost instantly by the worried face of my best friend, Christian.

"Where in the world have you been? And why in the world are you covered in blood!" he asked in a frantic voice. In reply I grabbed him and put him in a deadlock, shoving my fist into his scalp.

"Idiot, you're not my mother," I told him as I let him go. With a huge grin on my face I waved my friend off as I entered the hospital.

"Well, better get ready for difficult questions that I'll never answer."

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><p>[<strong>AUTHOR'S NOTE<strong>] Well, that's that and I'm gonna take a nap. I have the story planned out pretty well and I'll be putting another chapter up soon.

_Gift of Reading_ out!


	3. Release

**Author**: Gift of Reading

**Chapter**: Chapter 2 – Release

**BETA**: none

**Story**: Strings

**Rating**: T – violence and swearing, possible blood in future chapters.

**Related to**: Possibly _Rozen Maiden_ due to the puppets and _Avatar: The Last Airbender_ cause of the elemental control (although only fire and water).

**Summary**:  
>What would you do if your school was attacked by a fire puppeteer...fight or run? No matter, this is my story, my choice... and a few mishaps along the way.<p>

* * *

><p><em><strong>Release<strong>_

The inside of hospital isn't very interesting to all of those who don't know. I mean; it's cool having people wait on you, but after a while it becomes annoying. Seriously, I just told that nurse that I don't want to go anywhere and another one comes and asks me the same thing 10 minutes later.

The food isn't any better. I mean, it's not the bland monotone taste that you would expect; it has some flavour. Let me repeat that to all those out there who can't read, it has _some_ flavour. In other words, you can eat it if you're really desperate (which I'm not) not when your full and content on something yummy (like the chocolates my friend Christian had bought for me).

Speaking of which, I pulled out the hidden chocolates from under my covers and began munching on them, letting the flavour fill my mouth. I nearly choked when Christian appeared in the room, with a grouchy nurse behind him.

"Erm, I was ju-" I started before the nurse came and swiped the sweets off of me.

"We have you on high alert mister! Just because you feel fine doesn't mean you are! Until your released there is no more chocolate for you!" she hissed at me before walking off, leaving me feeling quite depressed.

"She said no chocolates, but she said nothing about caramels," stated Christian as he threw some caramels over to me.

"Yosh!" I grabbed the sweets in midair and tore open the packet, savouring the smell.

"Your acting like you've never had caramels for years," chuckled Christian before opening his own packet.

"You would be too if you were stuck here," I complained, plopping a caramel in my mouth. "The food is so tasteless and you're the only thing I actually look forward to in here. You're like my little ray of sunshine in the gloomy hellhole."

We both cracked up laughing earning curious glances from nearby doctors. Who cares what they think, I was having too much fun here. Just as we were calming down a doctor came into the room, causing us to stop laughing instantly. Christian stopped because he was worried he was going to be kicked out. Me because I was worried he would take my caramels.

"Mr. Yuji, I am here to give you your release form. Once you fill these out your free to go." He placed a clipboard at the end of my bed before turning around and leaving the room. Me and Christian watched him leave, shock caused us to stay silent.

"Did he really just say you're free to go?" asked Christian dumbfounded.

"Damn that nurse! She knew I was leaving and she wanted my chocolates! That witch!" I growled angrily, earning a hearty laugh from Christian. "What! I'm telling the truth!"

"You are soo strange Yuji; you're more worried about chocolate than the fact that your leaving."

I scowled at him, curse him for not caring about those chocolates that that witch was probably stuffing herself with. With a shrug I picked up the clipboard at the end of my bed, reading through the form.

"WAHHHHH! Parental or guardian signature! What kind of crap is that! Don't they know that my parents are dead and that I earn my own living."

"Maybe my mum can sign it?" suggested Christian, pulling out his mobile. His mum was awesome and invited me over whenever she had the chance, she would probably be willing to sign the form.

"Hello mum? It's Christian ... yes Yuji is here ... well we need your help ... yes you can come see him ... mum? Mum?" Christian looked at his phone with a strange face.

"She hung up on me," he explained. I nearly face planted myself, Christian's mum never did that unless it was something important. Within 30 minutes Christian's mum had made it to the hospital, nearly chocked the life out of me in a hug and signed the form allowing me to leave.

I was sitting back seat of her car as we rode home when Christian asked; "So Yuji, you going back to school?"

"What's the point now, I've probably missed out on so much it's not funny," I replied, but truth be told; I really wanted to go back.

"I'll let you read my notes, plus we're going to unlocking our elements and puppets soon," retorted Christian, knowing how enthusiastic I was about being a Puppeteer. With a sigh of defeat I complied, time to get back to school.

**[AUTHOR'S NOTE]** What do you think? So far so good? I hope you understand what's happening, if not it will become clear (probably).  
>So Yuji is heading back to school, but will everything work out alright?<br>*Dramatic music*  
>Yer, everything is calm for a while but I hope to get to the excitement soon.<p>

Oh and I do not own _Rozen Maiden_ or _Avatar_ or anything else that relates to this story.


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